Little Pro
Bromley, 1990Where are you guys sourcing your Spanish cedar from? I’ve got some supplies coming for my friends coolerdor you probably saw in the background in some of my recent smoke pics.
I have some coming in the mail I’m either going to put them in a bag with 84% packs or bag up his smokes with 69% then mount the panels and 84 the cooler with them mounted.
Quoted from EJS:Where are you guys sourcing your Spanish cedar from? I’ve got some supplies coming for my friends coolerdor you probably saw in the background in some of my recent smoke pics.
I have some coming in the mail I’m either going to put them in a bag with 84% packs or bag up his smokes with 69% then mount the panels and 84 the cooler with them mounted.
I ordered Spanish Cedar off Amazon, ten 12"x4" planks were about $50. I was thinking about getting a RV fridge fan for circulating the air inside to even out the humidity. Does anyone have a fan inside a larger humidor?
Quoted from PokerJake:I ordered Spanish Cedar off Amazon, ten 12"x4" planks were about $50. I was thinking about getting a RV fridge fan for circulating the air inside to even out the humidity. Does anyone have a fan inside a larger humidor?
Okay that’s where I bought his too. He’s paying for it but I’d hate to see him overpay. I’m hoping it’s not going to be overly dry.
I thought about doing the fan thing but I’m wondering if that would disturb the essence of the sticks too much. If you have boveda in all the areas of your humi you should be ok.
Based on the size of your build you are going to need quite a few bags to season let alone maintain so at least one in every shelf. Then have some on the bottom and maybe a rack mounted to the lid and you should be covered.
Quoted from PokerJake:I ordered Spanish Cedar off Amazon, ten 12"x4" planks were about $50. I was thinking about getting a RV fridge fan for circulating the air inside to even out the humidity. Does anyone have a fan inside a larger humidor?
If you have a Woodcraft near you, they are a bit cheaper and have coupons all the time (and you get to look at all the Festools).
I use an old PC fan hooked to a charger brick in my cooler for what I’m currently smoking. I only run it during the change of seasons to help everything stabilize quicker (The “R” in RH).
Quoted from EJS:I’m a little behind on posting my pics. jrpinball i know this is one of your favorites. This was a better experience than my first one but I’m not getting too excited for these. I might try one more of theirs someday.
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I've enjoyed the AVO XOs I've had, but never tried the maduro version.
I'm liking the Undercrowns. Both the Shade and Maduros.
Quoted from PlanetExpress:Figured I’d post some eye candy….. and my cigar Tetris skills.
Current smoking cooler (all partial boxes):
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Aging cooler (only full boxes in here):
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I didn’t include the desktop or the NCs…
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With that many boxes you don’t even need any extra planks!
Nice to see the Planet Express coolerdors on display again
Quoted from spfxted:I was with Harriet at Capital Grille enjoying a nice $275 lunch!....when my friend came in (big liquor dist on East Coast) and he was with the owner of one of our favorite steak houses (Sparkill Steak House) ......then things REALLY got crazy!
People give Jersey a hard time, but your life looks pretty sweet. JRs is a good place.
I'm married to a Bergen County girl for five decades. Jersey girls are foxy, spicy and fun. Can't go wrong with an occasional luxury meal, drink and cigar at a good steak house.
I was going through some old photos and found some that you guys might like to see. I used to have a decent cigar collection about a decade ago, but I started smoking less and the prices collectors were paying for rare cigars was through the roof. So, I ended up selling the vast majority of my collection and I really regret not saving a few more boxes.
These photos were taken at Tobacco Grove's old location, which was pretty much next door to their current location, lol. I had 5 or 6 lockers in their walk-in humidor and I emptied them out when I bought a small humidor for my house. Here's what was in my personal lockers at Tobacco Grove, circa November 2011:
Here's Kole with all those amazing cigars. He still works at TG and is one of the most knowledgeable people you'll ever meet! Seriously, the guy is just a walking encyclopedia of cigar knowledge! EJS has met him a few times, I hope everyone else in the metro area will have a chance to stop by TG and chat with Kole about cigars!
So now you're probably wondering were I put all these cigars, so here's the small humidor I dumped them in (for scaling purposes, that's me in the pic and I'm 6' tall):
The humidor was practically overflowing with some of the absolute best non-Cuban cigars you could get at the time:
I mentioned earlier that I sold most of my collection, so here's what I was left with 3 years later, circa 2014. There's still a ton of amazing cigars in there, but the collection was no more:
Here's one of the rare boxes that I wish I hadn't sold, I truly regret not sitting down with my friends and enjoying these:
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Here's a photo of my humidor collection from that same time, I sold most of these to collectors as well, but I kept the best ones:
Do any of you guys remember the Fuente Forbidden X "cigar in the bottle" calvados? I used to buy it by the case and resell the bottles (intact with booze and cigar) on ebay! These bottles are ridiculously rare now, I only have 1 left in my collection. I couldn't even tell you how much of that calvados I drank over the years! Hell, I probably went through 5 bottles just to myself at the 2008 God of Fire dinner!
Cool fact: the Forbidden X cigars are Opus X cigars that were aged in empty calvados barrels, which imparted a nice subtle flavor to them. And you probably guessed correctly, the cigars were aged in the barrels that contained the calvados that's now in these rare bottles. You're essentially drinking and smoking the same cask! I really wish they would do another release, but this was a one time deal. They can't do it anymore due to some kind of cigar/liquor import laws, so so it was explained to me. If you want something very rare for your collection and makes a great display piece, try to track down one of these intact bottles (it'll be difficult, there's probably only a few left in existence, it was a small release and a lot of us were drinking/smoking them as soon as we had one in hand):
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Here's my last bottle, it's now stored in one of the gun safes so no one drinks/smokes it!:
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The cigar is still in perfect condition, the nano sized Boveda pack is still damp and working after about 15+ years!!! Boveda packs are legit and if sealed correctly with nothing drawing humidity from it (balanced environment, just keeping it stable), the pack will last forever!
This post brought back some great memories and some photos I haven't seen in a long time. A glass of good booze, a good cigar and some good friends, sometimes that's all you ever need.
Quoted from USMCSGT0331:A glass of good booze, a good cigar and some good friends, sometimes that's all you ever need.
Well said! I always stick to the idea that cigars are cigars once they arrive in my stockpile…. Not investments, not a collection, just cigars. Some are rare, some are expensive, but they are all just cigars to be smoked and enjoyed!
Those Padron 40ths are still available, pick some up and get the chance to share them! The ones from the humidor didn’t taste any different.
FWIW: you dodged a bullet on that stack of Undercrowns. I have never found a cigar to lose flavor more quickly than those. When I started to see how quickly those were fading, I donated what I had to Cigars For Warriors, just to make sure someone enjoyed them before they we’re too far gone.
Thanks for sharing the story and photos!
Quoted from PlanetExpress:FWIW: you dodged a bullet on that stack of Undercrowns. I have never found a cigar to lose flavor more quickly than those. When I started to see how quickly those were fading, I donated what I had to Cigars For Warriors, just to make sure someone enjoyed them before they we’re too far gone.
That's awesome you donated those cigars, I can promise you that the troops who received them really enjoyed them! A lot of guys on my first deployment smoked cigars, but nothing like what gets posted in this thread. They were happy buying the largest cheapest sampler packs from Cigars International. Even with fading flavor, those Undercrowns would have been far better than any of the sticks in those mass produced CI bundles. Jeff (the owner of Tobacco Grove) and Kole sent a few care packages to my platoon when we were in Fallujah. All of you guys who donated cigars were spoiling us with the good stuff and we really appreciated it!
As for the stack of boxes in the pics, those aren't Undercrowns, my friend. Those are the original release of the Liga Privada No. 9 and T52 Flying Pigs! Undercrown didn't even exist as a label when those boxes were released. I sold each of those boxes for $600+, dropped them on ebay with a buy it now and they were gone within minutes. I have no idea if the Ligas dropped flavor like the Undercrowns you had, I either smoked them fresh or they got sold.
On another note, I don't know if any of you guys were buying/selling/trading cigars 10-15 years ago, but things back then were crazy! Some of these companies blew up and guys were chasing this stuff like it was the last woman on earth, lol.
I remember going to a Liga event at a store in Chicago, it was their Velvet Rat release, only 40 bundles of 10 cigars, limit 1 bundle per person. I texted a few of my friends and told them I was at the event, they started sending me stupid offers for even a single cigar. The guys on Halfwheel briefly mention the event in this review:
https://halfwheel.com/liga-privada-unico-serie-velvet-rat/215048/amp/
No one knew if Liga would ever make those or the Flying Pigs ever again, companies back then thrived on exclusive, limited production releases. It's crazy to see all these cigars piled on shelves now and think back on how they all used to be very rare and expensive collectibles.
Hell, watching the rise and fall of Viaje was pretty entertaining. That company has only had limited editions, they hit a massive decline in popularity because they lacked a core line of products to keep customers coming back and their quality dropped quite a bit. In my photos you can see a few boxes of Viaje, I'm glad I dropped those when I had a chance.
Tatuaje events were always fun and I enjoy most of their cigars. If you look at my humidor pics, 2nd shelf from the bottom, far left on that shelf you guys will see an unopened box of Tatuaje Dracs. That release was crazy, that was a very difficult box to get and most of the cigars were ruined because of the paint or lacquer fumes from the box, lol. If you opened them right away and kept them out of the box they were good to go. My box was still wrapped in plastic, unopened, it got sold. The Dracs that weren't ruined were very good. A cool thing with that release was the 13 tickets for the Ducati motorcycle drawing. One of my friends ended up with one of those tickets in his box of Dracs, he didn't win the bike though.
Well, it's been more of my rambling, but that was a really awesome time to be a cigar smoker/collector and I like reminiscing. Ebay was the wild west, all sorts of alcohol and tobacco, I even saw a few guns sell on there over the years, lol. Were any of you guys collecting cigars back then? Anyone else remember any of the ridiculousness?
Quoted from USMCSGT0331:Anyone else remember any of the ridiculousness?
Back when I was in college there was mention of a tax increase either for the state or nationally. I think nationally. Might have been 2006-2012 in between there, can't remember. Anyway, My father and I went right down the line buying at least two boxes of everything we had ever smoked and enjoyed. The tax thing did go through and it was well worth the buy. Maybe someone can jog my memory on what happened.
I think when you called me last week I told you I had found a Sultan at TG. It's like a fat Churchill by Hoyo De Monterrey. That was one we picked up in that order and it's the only time we'd ever had those. We did buy extra stuff too. We split one box of those.
Haven't had one since. No particular reason. We used to fire those up, start a campfire in a huge fire pit and then cook smores right around the time the fire was simmering down. By then the cigar was getting pretty rich and complimented the smores really well. The edge of the cigar would always get marshmallow around the side. They always had a heavier draw and you could easily push those things past 2 hours.
Somewhere I have pictures of that fire pit where we burned a Lethal Enforcers II 25" monitor cabinet and NBA jam cabinet I'll have to find pics on a hard drive sometime. I know those cabinets are worth their weight in gold now but I couldn't give them away back then....literally.
Quoted from USMCSGT0331:Here's Kole with all those amazing cigars. He still works at TG and is one of the most knowledgeable people you'll ever meet! Seriously, the guy is just a walking encyclopedia of cigar knowledge! EJS has met him a few times, I hope everyone else in the metro area will have a chance to stop by TG and chat with Kole about cigars!
That guy is awesome! He definitely gives you an education about each stick you look at or shows you. I should almost call him and have him set aside the rest of those "Dominican" Davidoff's after he sold me one. Hopefully will get some time to sit down and talk with him he's always keeping busy on the phone and helping customers.
Quoted from USMCSGT0331:That's awesome you donated those cigars, I can promise you that the troops who received them really enjoyed them!
those aren't Undercrowns
Anyone else remember any of the ridiculousness?
My BIL did some tours with Airborne and cigars were his #1 wish for care packages, which lead me to the CFW folks when I was looking to do more than just family care packages. Anyone looking for a great charity, please check them out: https://cigarsforwarriors.org/
I forgot the Undercrown shared the packaging from the Liga Privada… I think Undercrown was Drew Estate’s answer to: “We can’t produce more Liga Privada, but how can we make more money?”
I got into cigars at the end of the craziness with all the “limited release” Drew Estate’s, etc… But quickly moved to Cubans… if you thought the NC market was crazy, the Cuban stuff in full on nuthouse (bondroberts.com, if any wants to see how crazy it get…).
pinballplusMN joining me for one. Definitely going to be a 2 hour smoke. Same LFD as above already pulled the bands off.
Tried a Liga 9 flying pig and a Padron 2000 tonight in the hot tub. I thought both were excellent on different levels. The Liga 9 was rich and complex with a great draw, flavor didn't change much but good all the way through. The Padron was creamy with a lighter, almost truffle taste with a hint of pepper. Tempted to buy a box of the 2000s as an everyday smoke. I picked up a couple Padrons 1964s, going to give it a shot tomorrow. They both paired well with some Red Label and a Beam and Coke.
Quoted from PokerJake:Tried a Liga 9 flying pig and a Padron 2000 tonight in the hot tub. I thought both were excellent on different levels. The Liga 9 was rich and complex with a great draw, flavor didn't change much but good all the way through. The Padron was creamy with a lighter, almost truffle taste with a hint of pepper. Tempted to buy a box of the 2000s as an everyday smoke. I picked up a couple Padrons 1964s, going to give it a shot tomorrow. They both paired well with some Red Label and a Beam and Coke.
Since you enjoyed the Padron 2000, I highly recommend giving the Illusione Rothchildes a try, similar price and size, but for me a bit more complex. Can’t go wrong with any of the Padron Anniversary series, IMO.
Quoted from PlanetExpress:Since you enjoyed the Padron 2000, I highly recommend giving the Illusione Rothchildes a try, similar price and size, but for me a bit more complex. Can’t go wrong with any of the Padron Anniversary series, IMO.
I'll give them a shot, thanks for the tip. Have you guys tried Charter Oak? Thought about trying them as a cheap alternative.
Quoted from EJS:My first time with a Don Pepin I think. I’m a half inch in and getting a few pleasant notes. I’m undecided on these might try a larger stick in a 5 pack to see what happens. Maybe it’s more of a summer stick.
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I think you’ve found a love for cigars from My Father…. Don Pepin is the owner of My Father, which does all the rolling for Tatuaje. For some others, give L’Atelier and Surrogates a try.
Quoted from PlanetExpress:I think you’ve found a love for cigars from My Father…. Don Pepin is the owner of My Father, which does all the rolling for Tatuaje. For some others, give L’Atelier and Surrogates a try.
10-4 will try them both. I almost forgot I have 5 Judges around here somewhere too!
I’ve been resting some of these awhile... Acid Kuba Arte maduro. These came in a 20 count water tower humidor with really cool graffiti art on them. The infusion is subtle, so the cigar starts with a black licorice sweetness on the tip but that quickly fades letting the rich maduro flavor take over. Really the very best infused cigar from Drew Estate I have had. And on a side note, the humidor is air tight, after over two years the Boveda pack that came in it is still soft, amazing.
3BD56B40-0FC3-47A0-B117-6A673D2CA60F (resized).jpegThis is the second of two of a brand I got from PlanetExpress in a trade awhile ago. Really mild but still complex and smells great secondhand. I might need your help explaining the brand cause I can’t remember I’m sure you PMd me about them.
Oh and this is my second beer/ drink since September I’ve been staying dry for awhile.
3BDC4019-EBB2-4FBC-8C6E-2E1FA163A8E5 (resized).jpegQuoted from EJS:Have to finish the night with this little Punch. Good snack size.
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Those are tasty.
I braved the cold, and fired this one up. Two hours to finish it. It was well worth it.
Am I a slow smoker?
20220112_165056 (resized).jpgQuoted from jrpinball:Those are tasty.
I braved the cold, and fired this one up. Two hours to finish it. It was well worth it.
Am I a slow smoker?[quoted image]
Yes you are a slow smoker and that’s a good thing. I also get 2 hours out of a cigar often... smoking slow keeps the cigar cool and smooth tasting to the nub. I’ve had a couple from Southern Draw and both were very nice cigars.
Quoted from EJS:This is the second of two of a brand I got from PlanetExpress in a trade awhile ago. Really mild but still complex and smells great secondhand. I might need your help explaining the brand cause I can’t remember I’m sure you PMd me about them.
Oh and this is my second beer/ drink since September I’ve been staying dry for awhile.
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That would be a “Nudies” from FOH, distributed through Up Down Cigar in Chicago. The blend is by Hamlet.
Quoted from jrpinball:Am I a slow smoker?
No such thing as too slow. Obviously as long as you aren’t lighting every puff
Quoted from EJS:No such thing as too slow. Obviously as long as you aren’t lighting every puff
I took a little break to warm up inside, and when I came back out, the cigar was cold. So, only one relight! It was still very tasty right down to the nub.
Quoted from BigT:enjoying the JDN Dos Cientos cigar
I have two, one being for the release party that was supposed to happen which has been postponed. Basically it’s the 21st stick that comes in the box of 21. I’m excited to try mine haven’t had one yet.
Does anyone have any recommendations for sealing up a humi? I remember PlanetExpress once talked about bees wax.
The side “wings” on my two doors are decent but not perfect from a seal. The further back you go the larger the crack. In the worst area it’s still thinner than a dime. The reviews online made mention these doors held their humidity but I’m seeing too much of a gap. I’ll add a pic.
I looked at some thin gaskets at work but all were too thick. Ideally I need something very giving for the areas the seal is really good. I’m about 8 days into my 84% so I have a little time still. Worst case I don’t utilize this portion of the humi.
8469354D-8CE1-4ED5-8B12-7E1296A571CC (resized).jpegQuoted from EJS:Does anyone have any recommendations for sealing up a humi?
Mine just gets wrapped in a white kitchen bag during the dry winter months. Not elegant, but does the job.
Quoted from EJS:I remember PlanetExpress once talked about bees wax.
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Bees wax is good for lids on chest style humidors, but won’t be a help for doors. You could put the humidor in a cooler, but that kind of defeats the purpose. 
I went with a thin pass of electrical tape. It’s not perfect but it’s darn close. I’ll give it a try. I put a sensor in there so if the Boveda dries up soon I’ll find out soon enough.
I’ve got those RyJ that need to sit for a few years so it’s not like I’m going to access it often. I went heavier in the back to fill in the gap. This frees up my Cubador for another box now!
606FB93E-F981-43F6-B838-5AA1DEDB9D9B (resized).jpegQuoted from BigT:I am at the end of a 2 week trip for work and enjoying the JDN Dos Cientos cigar. If you are ever in Wichita hit up Mort’s. Their patio is heated, live music and they allow you to bring your cigars.
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I'm really glad I bought a box of those Dos Cientos, it's a great cigar!
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Miami Beach, FL
